Letters to the editor: Video games vs. guns, Great Divider, and Zimmerman

September 8, 2013

Video games vs. guns

Your Orlando reader was shocked to read that an 8 -year-old Louisiana boy shot and killed his grandmother after playing a video game rated "M" due to its violent and explicit content ("Video-game violence, Tuesday). Only later did the reader wonder why there was a loaded and accessible gun in the house.

My wife and I are United Kingdom residents visiting the Central Florida area. What shocks me is not children watching inappropriate material, but the seemingly calm acceptance of a society in which there are more guns in circulation than there are people.

Since December's massacre in Newtown, Conn. far more Americans have met their deaths in gun violence than U.S. troops during the 9-year war in Iraq. Total deaths during 2012 from gun violence in the U.S.A. were in the region of 32,000. The UK comparable figure was 146 for a population about a fifth of the size.

Figures that some of your readers may wish to contemplate while they caress the barrel of their favorite weapon with gun oil.

Rob Stubbs Davenport

Obama hasn't earned "Great Divider" title

According to letter writer Dawn Green in Wednesday's Sentinel, Obama is the "Great Divider," and the reason that race relations are deteriorating.

When President Obama was elected in 2008, I received an offensive email depicting the supposed inaugural party with a picture of a black man in a gutter with a watermelon lying next to him.

It got worse from there.

I've had to listen to and read idiotic claims that he's a Socialist, Muslim, atheist, and Kenyan who wants to take everyone's guns and give them to ACORN and the New Black Panther Party, expand welfare, tax everyone until they are poor, apply Shariah law while forcing Marxism to be taught in the schools and take In God We Trust off the money.

Is Obama perfect? Hardly. He's had lots of missteps and has been ineffective in breaking the gridlock. He's had a bit of a political tin ear and has been rigid when he should have been flexible and vice versa.

But the real Barack Obama is not the cartoon Obama of talk radio and Fox News. The real Obama is looking a lot like George W. Bush these days when it comes to foreign policy, and despite the dire predictions emailed to me over the last five years, I still have my guns, my money, and my freedom.

Oh, and just for the record, since I'm so used to correcting gross distortions, Abraham Lincoln was the Great Divider. Until your very election starts a civil war, you can't have that title.

Steve Browne Sanford

Defense of stand your ground runs aground

Rep. Matt Gaetz in defense of Stand Your Ground ("Keep divisive politics out of review of 'stand your ground'," Wednesday) writes that both the "elderly woman in a dimly lit parking lot or a college girl walking to her dorm at night" needs SYG in order to put up a defense against an attack without having to flee first. I would like Rep. Gaetz to produce one case in Florida history where either an elderly woman or a college girl was attacked and then arrested for not trying to flee.

Or even better, one case where in either situation the victim was arrested and charged with a crime after successfully defending her life against an attacker.

I doubt that any victim while being attacked has ever thought, "I must retreat because of the law." Apparently before 2005, Floridians had no right to defend their lives against any attack whatsoever.

The legal duty to retreat was not to keep anyone from defending their life — citizens have always had that right — it was to keep people from fighting to the death or using deadly force when they instead could get away safely.

Gaetz should ask Michael Palmer from Rivera Beach, who while retreating unarmed from a fight, was shot in the back of the head, if SYG helped his situation. The shooter was later acquitted under SYG.

I am glad to know that if I try to now flee a fight, I can be shot in the back of the head and the shooter might retain his freedom. I feel safer already.

Jason Kendall Altamonte Springs

Worries about Zimmerman

Even though George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, liberty could be the harshest sentence of his life. Unfortunately for Zimmerman, there are many who would like to see him dead. For the rest of his life, he may never again know peace in his own home.

Anyone walking toward or behind him could be perceived as a threat to his life. Along with his troubled marriage, Zimmerman's own life sentence may be too much for him to bear.

JoAnn Lee Frank Clearwater

Bureaucrats behind waste of good ideas

In Monday's letters (" Our aquifer is at risk"), Robert J. Fisher wrote that he doesn't understand why our governments don't use retired scientists, engineers, lawyers, and business executives to solve our water problem.

He is quite correct there is no agency in government to use the talent that's out there for the asking. There may be a few organizations within a state or city level, but they are few and far between.

Bureaucrats tend to follow a path which can guarantee them job security. If they take and run with someone else's idea, they then take the risk if something goes wrong. On the other hand, if they hire a consultant, they have someone else to blame.

Many of my professional friends and I have sent ideas to the government; most weren't even acknowledged.

During the oil spill in the gulf, it took a lot of pressure from the public for the government to even consider someone's idea outside of government.